Getting flashed by laptop is no fun

ORANGE – Stacy Gore was on the phone with a computer technician in India who had remotely accessed her computer to help repair it when an image flashed across her laptop screen, shocking her.

It was a snapshot of her bare breasts.

Gore had forgotten about the picture, which was tucked away in a file on her computer.

"It creeped me out," says Gore, 45.

She had logged into Dell's network through its DellConnect service and had gotten connected to the IT specialist overseas, who identified himself as Jack Neos.

He spent 2 ½ hours on the phone and online with Gore, trying to fix a virus, but his behavior extended well beyond professional boundaries, according to the police report Gore filed this week in Orange.

Gore, a real estate agent, alleges that Neos activated her built-in laptop camera while he was working and snapped photos of her and displayed them on her computer screen, making her feel uncomfortable, she says.

He also found and flashed the photos of her breasts.

Then, two days later, when she signed onto her laptop for the first time since connecting with the technician in India, the picture of her breasts appeared as her screen wallpaper, she says.

"Look, I'm a pretty mellow person," Gore says. "If some guy wants to look at a nude picture of some 45-year-old chick who was hot 20 years ago, then I say go ahead – that's fine with me.

"What concerns me is that other women and minors everywhere are probably using this DellConnect service, and this guy could be a predator."

Gore said the photo of her breasts was shot from her phone and e-mailed to an old friend several months ago.

She says the image got copied to her laptop when she downloaded information from her phone, and that she had forgotten about it until it popped up on her screen.

DELL'S RESPONSE

A spokeswoman at Dell's corporate headquarters in Texas said the company will look into Gore's complaint, but at this stage Dell could not comment on her allegations or the employee who Gore said acted inappropriately.

"I've been working in computer network security for 10 years and this is the first time I've heard of something this extreme," said Bob Gaines, an engineer and security expert at All Covered, a Redwood City-based company that provides IT support for small businesses.

Gaines said that typically, such sessions are monitored.

"And most employees know that when Big Brother is watching, they have to change their behavior," he said.

"People have a tendency to say, 'Do your thing, I'm going to go out and walk the dog,'' he said. "They walk away from their computers.

"It's important to watch what's going on on the screen."

Gore provided to the Register a screen shot of her computer that shows a blown-up picture of her naked breasts as the wallpaper, as well as an e-mail Neos allegedly wrote to her after their 2½-hour computer and phone session. The e-mail came from an Indian address.

In the Nov. 24 e-mail, which is riddled with misspellings and grammatical mistakes, Neos asks Gore how she is doing and whether she is having any issues with her computer.

He admits to finding a nude picture of her while trying to set up wallpaper for her laptop. He wrote:

"I saw ur NUDE pics i m really sry I couldn't say that over the phone that is y I m saying it now.

"N u look very very very very cute...it boosted me up and hope to have a good, sweet, cute, adorable, friend like U : )"

In the letter, Neos makes a reference to Gore's daughter – even though she doesn't have one. Gore believes this reference indicates that Neos may sending similar letters to other women by cutting and pasting portions of them.

"I bet I'm not the only one," she says.

A few days after the two spoke, Gore received a "friend request" from Neos on her Facebook account. She didn't respond.

According to his Facebook profile, Neos is 21 and attends Mumbai University.

Neos didn't respond to the Register's attempt to contact him at the e-mail address he used to contact Gore.

VIRUS

Gore's laptop and desktop computer got infected with a virus known as About: Blank, a malware program that redirects a user to a web page that has several links on it.

Gore tried to get rid of the virus using her own software, but when she couldn't she logged onto DellConnect, which allows technicians to access to a person's computer from a remote site.

Gore says she made small talk with the technician over the phone as he tried to sort out the problem, but did not encourage his alleged behavior.

"I knew he was doing stuff that was inappropriate," Gore says.

She called Dell to complain. After speaking to a third Dell official, all of them in India or Malaysia, she says, the woman offered to access her computer and get rid of the wallpaper showing her breasts, as well as four e-mails Neos had sent her.

That Dell official, Gore says, told her that Neos was "one of our best" technicians, and that someone at the company would be speaking to him about his interactions with Gore.

Now, more than two weeks later, Gore said her computer still is acting up – despite having purchased, at Neos' recommendation, $450 worth of anti-virus software.

Gore says she isn't expecting the police to be able to do anything, but she hopes that going public will make people cautious about what they keep on their computers and who they allow to access such information.